Long before women had the vote in England, Jennie Churchill (1854–1921) broke unwritten rules by campaigning in elections for her husband, Lord Randolph Churchill. A staunch freethinker, the former Jeanette Jerome of New York would edit her own magazine, fight for Protestant interests in Ireland, take the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII) as a lover, and risk her life to sail a hospital ship to South Africa in the Boer War. Charles Higham's portrait of Winston Churchill's American mother reveals a woman decades ahead of her time—a feminist, an advocate of Irish independence, and a notoriously promiscuous society belle.

"Dark Lady, like all of Charles Higham's biographies, is vivacious, sensational and revelatory. Jennie Churchill emerges as an intensely individual and passionate figure, and the book is indispensable reading for a full and proper understanding of her great son, Winston."—Simon Callow